


a trip to the moon

by openended



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q.  Leopard print.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a trip to the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: annoyance, show-off

Kathryn has a picture in her ready room – she’s not sure where it came from or who took the original but, at this point, she’s just accepted that sometimes _well, it just is_ is a valid explanation and it’s best to move on – of Captain Picard covering his face with his palm in exasperation. Sometimes she looks at it and contemplates sticking it on her door as an indication to the kind of day she’s having and a warning for everyone to act accordingly. She could make up some reasoning for keeping the picture around instead of tossing it in the replicator for recycling – _a reminder that Days Like This happen even to the best of us and I’m allowed a few more than he is on account of [insert aliens/anomaly/personnel issue/broken ship element/day of the week/other here]_ – but in reality, it’s a funny picture and she wants to give a medal to whoever snuck it on her desk because it never fails to cheer her up at least a point or two on a scale of twenty.

Except today.

Because today? Today Q has arrived and is driving her crazier than normal and he’s sitting on her couch and waxing poetic about _mon capitan_ (because, being Q and fundamentally nosy, the first thing he did upon snapping into her ready room was to check for new things and bother her about them) and all she wants to do is shove the picture up his ass. And if he technically doesn’t have an ass to shove something up then, well, she’s gotten her crew halfway across the Delta Quadrant without much more than sheer determination and duct tape, she’ll find a way.

She interrupts his monologue about Sherwood Forest (not entirely because she’s read that particular report and one mental image of a Klingon wearing tights and a silly hat is bad enough for her lifetime; she doesn’t need that in her mind again) to ask him what he wants this time and instantly regrets it. End of the universe this, end of the universe that, and for an all-powerful species they’re remarkably incapable of handling a crisis that should, to them, be no more obnoxious than a paper cut without bringing in another species who they seem intent on driving off the deep end with every visit. She grips her temples between her thumb and middle finger and closes her eyes.

“You know,” Q says, apropos of absolutely nothing considering he had been talking about the foundations of the multiverse and things she couldn’t possibly know, “you look remarkably like him when you do that.”

Kathryn opens one eye and glares at him through her fingers. She wonders what kind of trouble she would start if she punched him. She releases her head, opens the other eye, and leans back in her chair. Crossing her right leg over her left, she steeples her fingers under her chin. “Tell me what you want,” she holds up one finger, “in less than ten seconds. And then, in less than another ten seconds, tell me _why_.”

He does, and she times him, and the whole thing clocks in at eighteen seconds. That he came in under the time limit only adds to her annoyance. Even if she’s technically powerless to kick him out for not following instructions, she could at least _try_.

“Let me get this straight,” and she can’t believe that after the Borg and the Kazon and the Hirogen and Species 8472 and turning into a lizard (though they’ve all agreed to wipe that one from the log), that _this_ is quickly becoming the weirdest Tuesday on record, “you and…Q mated, had a child –”

“Oh, Kathy, you’re not still upset about missing out on that, are you?”

She ignores him, because she’s _not_ and telling him that will only encourage him to give her _more_ grief. “But Q won’t marry you because she thinks you haven’t had enough experience with other women.”

“Precisely.”

“So you came here to get that experience.” For the moment, she’s willing to bypass the idea that _Q_ wants to get _married_ (she’s willing to bypass that idea forever, actually, but if wishes were horses they’d have a whole lot less room in their cargo bays).

“Yes.”

“Because there’s been so much indication in the past that I’m interested.”

He crosses his arms, silent at that. Kathryn grins, momentarily triumphant.

Q snaps his fingers and a flash of light blanks out the room for an instant.

She blinks away purple spots and stares up at him. Because he’s standing on her desk. In nothing but a leopard print speedo.

Posing.

She’s torn between telling him that she’s the wrong tree to bark up with that particular item of clothing, laughing because Q is standing mostly naked on her ready room desk and her bridge crew hasn’t even been alerted that he’s here yet, and cringing at the sheer amount of muscle mass he gave himself. She’d be impressed at the bulge underneath the speedo if she didn’t know that this isn’t his natural form and that Q probably don’t even have human-like sex characteristics. 

She raises an eyebrow and tries to look bored.

He turns around, giving her a glimpse of everything, and this time she does laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Q steps elegantly off the desk and crosses his arms.

She only laughs harder, because the indignation on his face combined with the bodybuilder physique and the leopard print is, quite frankly, the most ridiculous thing she’s ever seen in her life.

And that’s saying _a lot._

She would tell him absolutely everything that’s wrong with this scenario – that he came to her for “experience” when he damn well knew she wouldn’t give it, that he chose to try to impress her with a truly unbelievable body, that he’s in her ready room at all – but that would take far too long. And she’s already broken her own _don’t spend more than five minutes alone with Q if you can help it_ rule.

Kathryn settles for, “You have that on backwards,” gesturing to the scrap of clothing between his legs.

Q, so flummoxed and vexed that he doesn’t bother to snap his fingers or leave her with a final witty quip before disappearing, will easily become her default mental image when the picture of Picard doesn’t do enough to lift her spirits.

But only from the waist up. She doesn’t want any reminder of _that_. Ever.

When she returns to her ready room after briefing the others on the events of her afternoon, she finds the speedo on the chair.

She replicates a stick.


End file.
